Fair Warning - Jack McEvoy Series 03 (2020) Read online

  12

  I decided that the best use of my time would not be to get into the crush of cars waiting to go over the mountain to the Valley through one of the choked-off freeways or mountain roads. That could take ninety minutes at this time of day. One of the things that made the City of Angels so beautiful also created one of its greatest hardships. The Santa Monica Mountains cut through the middle of the city, leaving the San Fernando Valley—where I lived and worked—on the north side and the rest of the city, including Hollywood and the Westside, to the south. There were two freeways that cut through the big passes and several two-lane winders. Take your pick but at five o’clock on a weekday you weren’t going anywhere. I drove over to Cofax Coffee and set up with a cappuccino and my laptop at a table beneath the display of bobbleheads and other Dodger paraphernalia.

  I first sent Myron Levin an email briefly summarizing my interview with Jason Hwang and the leads I had picked up regarding Orange Nano. Next, I opened a file and tried to recall everything Hwang had told me, writing a detailed summary of the interview from memory. I was halfway through my second cappuccino when I took a call from Myron.

  “Where are you?”

  “Other side of the hill. I’m at a coffee shop on Fairfax writing up notes and waiting out the traffic.”

  “It’s six now. When do you think you’re coming back?”

  “I’m almost finished with my notes, then I’ll wade into the traffic.”

  “So, by seven, you think?”

  “Hopefully before.”

  “Okay, I’ll wait for you. I want to talk about this story.”

  “Well, do you want to just talk now? Did you get my email? I just had a killer interview over here.”

  “I got the email but let’s talk it out when you get here.”

  “Okay. I’m going to try Nichols Canyon. Maybe I get lucky.”

  “I’ll see you when I see you.”

  After the call I wondered why Myron wanted to talk face-to-face. My guess was that he might not be as convinced as I was that there was something here. He had not commented on my email and it seemed as though I would need to sell him on the story all over again.

  Nichols Canyon was a charmed route. The traffic flowed smoothly through the hillside neighborhoods above Hollywood until the unavoidable bottleneck at Mulholland Drive. But once I got through, it was clear sailing again down into the Valley. I walked into the office at 6:40 and considered it an accomplishment.

  Myron was in the conference room with Emily Atwater. I put my backpack down on my desk and gave him a wave through the window. Since I had gotten back earlier than expected, I figured he was probably in a story conference with her.

  But he waved me in and made no move to dismiss Emily when I entered.

  “Jack,” he said, “I want to bring Emily in to help out with your story.”

  I looked at him a long moment before responding. He had done a smart thing. He had kept Emily in the room because that would make it harder for me to push back against his plan. Still, I couldn’t just accept the encroachment without protest.

  “How come?” I asked. “I mean, I think I have it covered.”

  “This Orange Nano angle you mentioned in your email looks promising,” Myron said. “I don’t know if you know Emily’s pedigree but she covered higher ed for the Orange County Register before coming to FairWarning. She still has contacts down there and I think it would be good for you two to partner up.”

  “Partner up? But it’s my story.”

  “Of course it is, but sometimes stories get bigger and need more hands—more experienced hands. Like I said, she knows people down there. You also have the police situation to deal with.”

  “What police situation?”

  “As far as I know, you’re still on their person-of-interest list. Have you talked to them lately? Have they processed your DNA?”

  “I haven’t talked to them today. But that’s not a situation. As soon as they run the DNA I’ll be off the list. I was planning on going down to Orange Nano first thing tomorrow.”

  “That sounds good but that’s what I mean. I don’t want you going there without preparation. Have you done any backgrounding on the lab or its people?”

  “Not yet, but I will. That’s why I came back to the office, to do some research.”

  “Well, talk to Emily. She’s already done some work and maybe you two can come up with a plan of action.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just looked down at the table. I knew I wasn’t going to change his mind, and maybe also knew—grudgingly—that he was right. Two reporters were better than one. Besides, having half the staff on the story would make Myron more invested in it.

  “Okay,” Myron said. “Then I’ll let you two get after it. Keep me in the loop.”

  Myron got up and left the room, closing the door behind him. Before I could speak, Emily did.

  “Sorry, Jack,” she said. “I didn’t go asking to be part of this. He pulled me in.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not blaming you. I just thought I had things in hand, you know?”

  “Yes. But while we were waiting for you I did do a preliminary workup on William Orton, the guy who runs Orange Nano.”

  “And?”

  “I think there’s something there. Orton left UC-Irvine to start Orange Nano.”

  “So?”

  “So, you don’t just leave a UC job where you’re tenured and have a full lab at your disposal and unlimited doctoral candidates at your beck and call. You can start an outside company or lab but the university is your anchor. You keep that affiliation because it works for you. It’s easier to get grants, professional exposure, everything.”

  “So something happened.”

  “Right, something happened. And we’re going to find out what it is.”

  “How?”

  “Well, I’m going to work UCI—I still have a few sources there—and you do what you said, you work Orange Nano. I don’t want to step on your toes but I think I can help here.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good, then.”

  “This is how I think we should work it …”

  Over the next hour I shared everything I knew so far about the deaths of the four women and GT23. Emily asked many questions and together we made an action plan that had us attacking the story from two angles. I went from being reluctant to being glad she was on board. She was not as experienced as I was but she was impressive, and I knew she had probably broken the most important stories FairWarning had put out in the last couple of years. I left the office that night believing Myron had made a good move putting us together.

  It was eight o’clock when I got back to my Jeep and drove home. After parking in the garage I walked to the front of the apartment building to check my mail. It had been a week since I checked the box and this was primarily to empty it of all the junk mail I received.

  The building’s management provided a trash can next to the bank of mailboxes so junk mail could be quickly transferred to its final destination. I was going through my stack, dropping one piece after the other into the bin, when I heard steps coming from behind me and then a voice I recognized.

  “Mr. McEvoy. Just who we were looking for.”

  It was Mattson and Sakai. Mattson was back to saying my name wrong. He was carrying a folded document and held it out to me as he approached in the dimming light of the day.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “This is a warrant,” Mattson said. “All signed, sealed, and delivered by the City Attorney’s Office. You’re under arrest.”

  “What? Arrest for what?”

  “That would be section 148 of the California Penal Code. Obstructing a police officer in the discharge of his duty. That officer would be me and the investigation of the murder of Christina Portrero. We told you to back off, McEvoy, but no—you kept harassing our witnesses and lying your ass off.”

  “What are you talking about? I didn’t obstruct you or anybody. I’m
a reporter working a story and—”

  “No, you’re a person of interest and I told you to back off. You didn’t, so now you’re fucked. Put your hands up on that wall.”

  “This is crazy. You’re going to create a major embarrassment for your department, do you know that? You ever heard of a thing called freedom of the press?”

  “Tell it to the judge. Now turn around and put your hands up there. I’m going to search you for weapons.”

  “Jesus, Mattson, this makes no sense. Is it because you don’t have jack shit on Portrero and you want a distraction?”

  Mattson said nothing. I did what I was told and moved to the wall, not wanting to add resisting arrest to the bogus charge of obstruction. Mattson quickly searched me and emptied my pockets, giving my phone, wallet, and keys to Sakai. I turned my head enough to check out Sakai and he didn’t look like a man who was fully on board with this move.

  “Detective Sakai, did you try to talk him out of this?” I asked. “This is a mistake and you’re going to go down with him when the shit hits the fan.”

  “It would be best if you kept quiet,” Sakai said.

  “I’m not going to keep quiet,” I threw back at him. “The whole world is going to hear about this. This is bullshit.”

  One by one Mattson pulled my hands off the wall and cuffed my wrists behind my back. He led me to their car, which was parked against the curb.

  As I was about to be placed in the back seat I saw a neighbor from the building come up the sidewalk with her dog on a leash and stare silently at my humiliation while her dog yipped at me. I looked away, then Mattson put his hand on the top of my head and pushed me down into the back seat.

  HAMMOND

  13

  Hammond was in the lab at his station, spreading nitrocellulose over a gel tray he had just retrieved from the cooker. He felt his watch vibrate against the inside of his wrist. He knew it was one of his flags. He had gotten an alert.

  But the process could not be interrupted. He continued his work, next blotting the gel tray with paper towels, making sure to keep uniform pressure on the gel across the entire tray. When he was finished blotting he knew he could take a break from the work. He checked his watch and read the text.

  Hey Hammer, wanna grab some beers?

  This was a cover text emanating from a cellular relay coded as Max. Of course, Max didn’t exist but anybody who happened to see the message pop up on his watch, even worn on the inside of his wrist, would not be suspicious, though the message came in at 3:14 a.m. and all the bars were closed.

  Hammond went to his lab table and pulled his laptop from his backpack. He checked the other stations in the lab and saw that nobody was watching him. Only three other technicians were working graveyard anyway, and there were empty stations separating all of them. It was a budgetary thing. The wait time on rape kits and some cold-case homicides was still months where it should be weeks if not days, but the city’s budget masters had cut back on the lab’s third shift. Hammond expected that soon he would be working days again.

  He opened the laptop and used his thumb to authenticate. He went to the surveillance software and pulled up the alert. He saw that one of the detectives he was monitoring had just made an arrest and put someone in jail. His filing the arrest report had triggered the alert. Hammond’s partner, Roger Vogel, had hacked the internal LAPD network and set the whole alert system up. He had master skills.

  Hammond checked the other techs and then looked back at his screen. He called up the report filed by Detective David Mattson. He had arrested a man named Jack McEvoy and booked him at the jail at LAPD’s Van Nuys Division. Hammond read the details of the arrest, then reached into the backpack for the phone he carried in an inside zippered pocket. The phone for emergency contact.

  He turned the phone on and waited for it to boot up. Meantime, he closed out the arrest report and went to the public-access page for the city’s jail system. He put in the name Jack McEvoy and was soon looking at a mug shot of the man. He looked angry and defiant as he stared at the camera. There was a scar on his upper left cheek. It looked like it could have been easily erased by plastic surgery. But McEvoy kept it. Hammond thought it might be some sort of badge of honor with the reporter.

  The phone was ready. Hammond called the single number stored in its memory. Vogel answered with sleep in his voice.

  “This better be good.”

  “I think we have a problem.”

  “What?”

  “Mattson arrested somebody tonight.”

  “That’s not a problem. That’s good.”

  “No, not for the murder. It was a journalist. He was arrested for obstructing the investigation.”

  “You woke me for that?”

  “It means he may be onto this.”

  “How could that be? The police aren’t even—”

  “Call it a hunch—whatever.”

  Hammond looked at the mug shot again. Angry and determined. McEvoy knew something.

  “I think we have to watch him,” he said.

  “All right, whatever,” Vogel said. “Text the details and I’ll see what’s out there. When did this happen?”

  “They booked him last night. I got flagged on the software you set up.”

  “Glad it worked. You know, this could be a good thing for us.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet. A couple of ways. Let me go to work on it. You want to meet in the morning? In daylight?”

  “Can’t.”

  “You fucking vampire. Sleep later.”

  “No, I have court first thing. Testifying today.”

  “What case? Maybe I’ll come watch.”

  “A cold case. Guy killed a girl thirty years ago. He kept the knife, thought washing it off would be okay.”

  “Dumbass. Where?”

  “Up in the hills. Threw her off an overlook on Mulholland.”

  “I mean where’s the courtroom?”

  “Oh.”

  Hammond realized he didn’t know himself.

  “Hold on.”

  He dug into the backpack and pulled out the notice to appear.

  “Downtown criminal courts. Department 108, Judge Riley. I have to be there at nine to go on first.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll see you there. Meantime, I’m on this reporter. Does he work at the Times?”

  “The arrest report didn’t say. It said occupation journalist and the summary said he was obstructing the investigation by harassing witnesses, not revealing he was an acquaintance of the victim.”

  “Holy shit, Hammer, you left the key part out. He knew the victim?”

  “That’s what it says. On the report.”

  “Okay, I’m on it. Maybe I see you in court.”

  “Okay.”

  Vogel disconnected. Hammond turned off his phone and dropped it back into his backpack. He stood there thinking about things.

  “Hammer?”

  He whipped around. Cassandra Nash was standing there. His supervisor. She had come out of her office without him noticing.

  “Uh, yes, what’s up?”

  “Where are you with that batch? It looks like you’re just standing there.”

  “No. Uh, I mean I was just taking a second. I’m blotting and was just giving it a minute, then I’ll start hybridization.”

  “Good, so you’ll get that done before end of shift?”

  “Of course. Absolutely.”

  “And you’ve got court in the morning, right?”

  “Yes, all set on that, too.”

  “Good. Then I’ll leave you to it.”

  “You hear anything about the next deployment?”

  “As far as I know, we’re still on third shift. I’ll let you know what I know when I know it.”

  Hammond nodded and watched her go check on the other techs, doing her supervising thing. He hated Cassandra Nash. Not because she was his boss. It was because she was aloof and fake. She spent her money on designer handbags and shoes. She talked
about fancy restaurants she and her douchebag husband went to for chef tastings. In his mind Hammond had conflated her named to Cash because he believed she was wholly motivated by money and possessions the way all women were. Fuck them, he thought as he watched Nash talk to one of the other technicians.

  He went back to the gel he was prepping.

  14

  At 9 a.m. Hammond sat on a marble bench in the hallway of the ninth floor of the Criminal Courts Building. He had been told to wait there until it was time for him to testify. On the bench next to him were his notes and charts regarding the case and a cup of black coffee from the snack bar near the elevator alcove. The coffee was terrible. Not the designer stuff he was used to. He needed it because he was dragging after a full eight hours on the graveyard shift, but he was having a hard time stomaching the harsh brew and feared it would give him stomach issues that might haunt him on the witness stand. He stopped drinking it.

  At 9:20, Detective Kleber finally stepped halfway out of the courtroom and waved Hammond over. Kleber was the lead detective on the case.

  “Sorry, they had to argue a motion before bringing the jury in,” he explained. “But now we’re ready.”

  “Me too,” Hammond said.

  He had testified many times before and it was now a routine. All except for his satisfaction in knowing that he was the Hammer. His testimony always sealed the deal and from the witness stand he had the best angle on “the moment”—the second when even the defendant was convinced by Hammond’s testimony and the hope went out of his eyes.

  He stood in front of the witness stand, raised his hand, and took the oath to tell the truth. He spelled his first and last names—Marshall Hammond—and then stepped up and took the witness seat that was between Judge Vincent Riley and the jury. He looked at the jurors and smiled, ready for the first question.

  The prosecutor was named Gaines Walsh. He handled many of the LAPD’s cold cases and so Hammond had testified on direct examination from him many times before. He practically knew the questions before they were asked but acted as though each one was a new one to consider. Hammond was a slightly built man—never played sports while growing up—with a professorial goatee whose reddish whiskers contrasted with his dark brown hair. His skin was paper white after nearly a year on the midnight shift. Vogel’s teasing on the phone call had been on point. He looked like a vampire caught in daylight.